1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to the field of communications. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and system for dynamic traffic prioritization in a communication network, in order to mitigate adverse effects of traffic congestion on a selected subset of traffic experiencing the congestion. Such congestion can be caused during periods of exceptionally high traffic, such as during Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, natural and man-made disasters or network failures.
2. Background Information
Typically, exceptionally high traffic volume due to unplanned events, such as during a Distributed Denial of Service attack, creates bottlenecks in two places: (a) Congestion in the communication link between the provider edge router and the end system, and (b) Exhaustion of resources such as CPU cycles and memory on the end system. These communication bottlenecks significantly reduce the effective performance of the end system, and thus, its usefulness. The present disclosure addresses the former of these bottlenecks, i.e., the congestion on the communication link between the provider edge router and the end system. The present disclosure is applicable to the situation described in (a), independent of the cause of congestion.